Question

I am an novice web developer. I usually use multiple hierarchical tables to get the design I want. I have been looking over a lot of web 2.0 websites and most of them seem to use the div / float combination.

Which is a better practice to use? Also since I’m well versed with the table approach, what advantages does the div/float approach give?

Answer 1

As the HTML standard says, tables should only be used for their designed aim: beeing tables. Instead of using tables for layouting, css provides huge functionality to position and layout html entites. The huge advantage is (or should be) that the single exchange of a stylesheet result in a comnplete other design (most table layouts must be restructured from scratch to provide a new design). Thus the use of css should result in more flexibility.

One realy good start into this task should be the zengarden, displaying very much css designs based on one html page.

http://www.csszengarden.com/